“Mosquitoes and gnats,” Reuben Root joined in. “In that sticky heat they’ll suck your blood and make you so sick you wish you was dead.”
“Them’s the only things you don’t have to worry about come winter like this,” Beulah snorted. “But going north, you’re still bound to run into poisonous snakes—the likes of cottonmouths and copperheads.”
“Only on the warm days,” Kingsbury advised.
“I know ’nough ’bout ’em,” Titus replied. “Sunny days you just gotta be watchful for the places them snakes is out to lay around and warm themselves.”
Root trembled as if cold water had been poured on him. “What I don’t like is them panthers crying in the night out there. Sounds just like a woman, wailing for help.”
Night after night it had been the same for Titus. Awakened from a fitful sleep by the cries from all manner of shapeless creatures out there in the dark. He’d lie wide-eyed for the longest time, his back slid up to Hezekiah’s, hoping to share their warmth and Bass’s two blankets, as he listened to the night-things come into voice out there in the swamp.
Day after day it was to be the same for them as well. Up before first light to chew on the cold remains of last night’s supper as they rolled their blankets, tied their few belongings over their shoulders, then trudged on across the frosty bayous and skirted the great, stagnant pools encircling the base of each cypress tree, intent on covering as much ground as they could, what with the few hours of daylight the winter granted them.
Every morning the others let Titus lead off, followed closely by the runaway slave. Kingsbury would follow with the others after a few minutes, wanting to assure that they would not frighten off any of the game Bass might run across throughout the day. Most evenings Titus provided fresh game for Beulah to cook over their supper fire. But every now and then they failed to hear a gunshot as twilight came down and the temperature dropped. It was then they would have to content themselves with what they had saved of last’s night meal and hope that something would cross the youngster’s path come the morrow.
Far beyond the Natchez District they emerged from the interminable bayou, at the edge of which stood the Chickasaw Agency,* where the footpath grew worse. Below their feet the soil had become gravelly, eating away at their boots, chewing up Titus’s moccasins, requiring nightly repairs and patching.
“They call this part of the road ‘the Barrens,’” Ovatt declared that first night the landscape changed so drastically. “From here on out to Tennessee, the trail gets a mite rough.”
Bass poked at a blister on his heel with the point of his knife and asked, “Can’t imagine how it’s gonna get any worse.”
The following day they reached what most travelers considered the halfway point of the Natchez Trace: Mclntoshville, named for an early Scottish trader who had come to the Chickasaw to trade but stayed on to father his own dynasty. More commonly known as Tockshish Stand* to the tribe and travelers alike, the village lay some 310 miles from Natchez—the first such village a wayfarer passed in all that distance from the Mississippi. Not another sign of civilization, not one mail carrier, merchant, or party of traders.
From Tockshish the path did grow worse, threading in and out from open woods to sparse sections of inhospitable prairie as the ground rose, becoming more bushy and broken as they ascended the divide that would take them to the Tennessee River, still eighty miles beyond. Up, then down, the Trace led Titus through that unforgiving wilderness, as he listened through each short day only to the sound of his moccasins on the pounded earth, perhaps the haunting crackle of the dried cane as it shook, troubled by the winter wind.
There were times Titus stopped—not so much to rest his feet or to catch his breath—but for no other reason than to turn around and listen, hoping to catch the sound of Hezekiah coming up the trail behind him, or to turn around atop a hill and look back, hoping to spot the boatmen and Beulah, plodding along beneath the cold, gray, monotonous sky that each day offered them.
Already December was growing old. Just how old, he had no way of knowing for certain. The way things looked now, he might well be seeing in the new year still caught in this wilderness. A new year, and with it his seventeenth birthday. That afternoon he knocked a turkey cock out of its roost in the bare branches of a beechnut tree. While it wasn’t the finest feast he had provided them, the meal filled their bellies as the gloom of winter’s night closed its fist around them.
“We should be drawing close to the Tennessee,” Ovatt declared as he picked his teeth and wriggled his feet close by the fire’s warmth that night.
“Keep your eye peel’t tomorry,” Kingsbury said, turning to Bass. “The trail takes you down to the river crossing.”
Titus asked, “We gonna have to ford it?”
“Time was, a riverman had to ford it,” Kingsbury replied. “Not no longer. Years back a Scotch feller named Colbert come to trade among the Chickasaws and saw him the chance to make a nice living.”
“King of the roost, that one is now,” Root added.
Kingsbury nodded. “Married into the tribe, built him his ferry, and set himself up right nice.”
Ovatt rubbed his hands together, teeth gleaming in the firelight. “Got him a mess of handsome daughters too!”
“Half-breeds they are,” Root explained with a wink.
“Still as handsome a woman as you’re likely to meet along the trail,” Ovatt declared, then suddenly turned to Beulah. “Pardon me, ma’am. Not meaning that you ain’t a handsome woman … just, that—well, considering you and Kingsbury, see?”
She grinned and dropped her eyes. “I took me no offense, Heman.” Then turned to Bass. “You just watch yourself there at Colbert’s Ferry, Titus. Them half-breed girls got Injun blood in ’em, and there’s no telling what they’ll do when they see a likely young man such as you come round.”
“M-me?”
“Yes, you,” Beulah said. “Don’t you go and run off into the woods with none of ’em.”
“They’ll just as soon slit your throat as wet your honey-dauber,” Root grumbled. Then apologized: “I’m sorry, ma’am. It’s me and my awful manners again.”
“What Reuben says is right,” the woman explained. “They’re the sort won’t think twice ’bout lifting a man’s purse or knocking him over the head for his money. They ain’t looking for your hand in marriage.”
“D-daughters,” Titus repeated, sensing that sudden animal urge cross his loins with a delicious electricity.
“Least seven or eight,” Kingsbury declared. “Less’n Papa Colbert’s married any of ’em off since’t last summer when we was through here.”
“Why would he go an’ do a fool thing like that?” Root demanded. “Them girls is the best he’s got to offer —’sides that river ferry.”
“Reuben’s right,” Ovatt agreed. “Men on the Trace allays look forrad to talking with them girls, dancing some with ’em, after hunnerds of miles of no womankind to speak of.”
“Wenches is what they are,” the woman said. “The devil’s own handmaidens.”
“Did you say dancing?” Titus asked, staring off into the distance.
Why, he had never been allowed to dance before. As much as music made his feet move, his folks had for all those years enforced a strong proscription against dancing during every visit to the Longhunters Fair, where he had always contented himself watching others jig and clog, reel and waltz to the merry music.
“Ah, hell,” Beulah groaned as she glanced over to find that faraway look in the youngster’s eyes. “Looks like we already lost this’un to that devil Colbert’s half-breed daughters!”
*
*
*
16
The more Titus looked over those young half-breed Colbert women, the more he realized these dusky-skinned
